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Talk:A. Little: Devious/@comment-30564209-20180226215627
I don't really know where to start with this review, and when you don't know where to start a review, it's always good to start by claiming that you don't know where to start, I think that makes for a good start. A Little Devious has come and gone by over six short weeks, and during that time I can proudly say that, for once, I have been your most - or sole - loyal reader. Several things help to that: me not being the jerk I used to be; me not having much of anything to do right now; and the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed Devious Butlers and the characters of Aliza, Kathryn and Silvia, who all came back to head this spin-off. Also, I gave you the idea in the first place, so this show is on me, kinda. So, and since this is the series finale and I now have the global scope of the entire series, I shall begin by commenting on it as a whole. I feel like ALD could have used some pitching. You named the beginning "A Little Pilot", which, again, a pilot episode is something that gets pitched before the series is actually picked up, and if you knew the entire show would air as it is, then using "pilot" doesn't work. "A Little Premiere" would have been better. That being said, you could and perhaps should have pitched this show to us, sold your idea, let us decide whether or not we wanted it, because it is a responsibility to continue a story in the universe of an established, popular, pre-existing series; following it up with a spin-off could add to it, or ruin it, at least for some. Again, I am, so far, the only person who has read this spin-off, and by the looks of it, Josh and Ben aren't too interested in reading it. They loved DB, they loved DB's ending, we all did, and ALD, as fun an idea as it might be, may just prove to be an unnecessary add-on. And that's what I have concluded upon: it doesn't add anything. Aside from the cool tie-in with the Littles' mystery way back when in season 2 (again, a great touch), this series was quite unnecessary. No stories were left unresolved in DB, and the returning characters' personalities weren't exactly worked on much. They're the same basic characters they were in DB, only more... ratchet. However, you could argue that ALD never aimed to be more than it is, just a fun addition, icing on the cake. Again, that should have been pitched to us, along with a basic summary of what role each character would play in the series. I say this because I went into it thinking - as I've told you before - this would be a buddy-cop show with Aliza and Kathryn, but we didn't get that. And even if the point was just for it to be a fun add-on, that only brings me to my next point. Joe asked me a few weeks ago if comedy saturation was a concern with these episodes, and I foolishly told him no - and meant it - because I believed that usually comes from binge-watching comedy shows, not watching individual episodes. If that were a problem, no one would be able to properly enjoy a single episode of any given sitcom. However, ALD DOES indeed overdo it. You cram SOOOO much comedy into every single scene, so many throwaway lines are jammed into every dramatic scene that take the impact away from it, like Shaniqua getting out of the burning house or helping MIke on the chopper, before her big reveal. It makes it so that the drama doesn't pack a punch, and that the comedy falls flat because the situation doesn't call for it. So, both things end up not working, which isn't a good thing. And it is all so over-the-top... I have turned a blind eye to pretty much all things concerning Shaniqua Mae, from her ever-changing number of kids to the many unrealistic disgusting things she does, like actually baking bread in her underwear, but it got to be way too much. She gives out chocolate milk, for God's sake. With poison in it. That was a headscratcher to begin with, but again, I turned a blind eye to it... until it became a major thing. Crucial to the plot. You can't overlook it then. I am beyond confused as to why that became an actual thing. This may be presumptious of me, since I don't know what actually went down in the "writers' room", but I can totally imagine Jo proposing that... just not Joe actually accepting the idea. Writing it down. Showing it to us. Look, I'm gonna say something, and try not to misinterpret me: if I had done that on any one of my shows, MAYBE I could have made it work. Not because I'm a better writer, not at all what I'm saying, simply because my shows ARE weird and unrealistic. OUaP is set in a fairytale world where people's magical powers are usually related to their sexuality in some way. Poisoned boob milk would not be too far-out. WL is set God knows where, and nothing is realistic about it, the characters live in portals or templates or some shit, and there's magic and robots and everything. Things like that COULD happen. Devious Peep COULD get away with the kinda stuff Shaniqua pulls. But in this universe? DB had its fair share of references and meta humor and absurd stuff, but for the most part it was a realistic show. ALD is so over-the-top and bizarre... Shaniqua's kids drop dead and no one bats an eye. Kathryn keeps being attacked by seagulls. It's just too unrealistic. Plus, you absolutely overdo the homages and references and meta humor, despite giving me crap for overdoing it in OUaP 1.14. How was that any worse? There's a nod to something that happened in the past in pretty much every scene - usually more than one, and while it leaves Mike Cage stumped, wondering what people are talking about, it leaves me stumped as well, but because it's hard to believe that 30% of the dialogue is made up of that. And there is sooooo much racism... Honestly, Josh is the one that called my attention to that, but since he brought it up, I couldn't help but notice. Soooo much racism... Now, let's deconstruct the mystery. When it was initially thought that Henry had killed himself, I was divided. On the one hand, it was surprising, the idea that NO ONE had killed Henry, he'd done the deed himself. On the other hand, it was also a bit of a letdown. Granted, it aptly defied expectations, as surely no one goes into a mystery resolution expecting for the murder victim to not be a murder victim at all. But it also feels a bit like a cop-out? Idunno. Then, surprise surprise, Shaniqua Mae did it. By the time THAT was revealed, I wasn't expecting it because I did think the suicide explanation was it. However, I had already called that Shaniqua Mae was behind it all. In fact, I added that to the end of my 1.05 review (which, looking back, might also be part of the reason why you two got so pissy after reading it?); Josh said it was probably Wilma, which, why was she even around? To make recurring? Anyway, I predicted Shaniqua, despite her clearly not being an obvious suspect, for one very simple reason: she was comic relief. And you ALWAYS make the comic relief character the culprit. It's become a pattern with you. Justine in season 1, Rochelle in season 2, Juanita in season 3, and now Shaniqua in the spin-off. Somehow, you always entangle the comic relief in the long-running mysteries. This was no different. You could have gone for a new formula, but you didn't, which made this the first killer in this universe's history that I actually guessed. So, not a great way to wrap it up, since you know I love being surprised. And honestly, the reasons felt a little dumb for me. And then there's the way in which Henry died, which ties in to my previous paragraph's complaint of the over-the-top humoristic stuff becoming too relevant to overlook: he dies because of Shaniqua's poisoned boob milk. I don't even get how she spills a liquid into bricks of cocaine and they just, idk, remain the same? Instead of turning into some paste? How would Henry not notice something was different about the drugs he was consuming? That's just hard to understand, much like Antwon's death in the previous episode. Also, I worried about how Antwon would appear in the series finale, and his only cameo was fucking Kathryn. Ok. Nothing about Henry's death worked for me, which includes Kathryn somehow toppling him over the balcony just by removing the coat from underneath it. The suicide alone would have been disappointing perhaps, but more logical and surprising. All the other deaths in this episode were kind of weird too, from Wilma's heart attack to Celeste's vibrator-induced electrical shock. Sadie's stroke is right there as well. Meanwhile, I always half-expected you guys to kill off Huberd, but he made it through. Huh, who'da thunk it? Good for him. More on the humor: Aliza pointed out near the end of the episode that cursing was used a lot in this spin-off when it was always censored in the original show to respect wikia's guidelines. That went mostly unnoticed by me, but reminds me of another problem: the show got to be so trashy that every character in it was trashy, and wound up sounding the same. Hearing Silvia cursing feels out of character, especially with her housewife act. You use the same style of humor for every character, because you are basically talking through every character - their personalities have become more YOUR OWN, rather than their own, to the point where you can't tell them apart. You criticized me for making the characters not have personalities that they could be characterized for, but you gave your characters the exact same personality. They all curse, they all get ratchet and aggressive, they all make references and have zany attitudes. Even the narrative joined in. You managed to use and abuse the meta humor both in and out of the dialogue. I don't buy Judge Quinnson's new characterization, I don't buy that Sadie, a young woman, would talk the way she does, and Celeste would go from being a sophisticated frost queen to straight up out of the hood in a heartbeat, which is ironic in her case. Now, let's talk about the characters. Not the returning ones, I've already talked about them, but the new ones. Mike's fine. He's a little boring, but it's acknowledge that he's a little boring, in a way that actually works. He served as the straight man throughout the insane goings-on and managed to remain likable and rootable all the while. I could have had him ending up with Aliza, with Sebastian or alone and be fine either way, so I guess he's not that shippable with anyone, but I'm content that he wound up with Aliza. Oh, and alive. As for Antwon, welp, I've already expressed my disappointment with his death, or the fact that he will now forever be a main character of the DB universe. Feels wrong somehow, for a character that was so irrelevant to the series' climax... and who was also kind of irrelevant before that. Shaniqua being main would have made more sense, or at least just as much. But the biggest disappointment is Michelle. She's... kind of an afterthought, isn't she? She wasn't the killer, nor related to the death in any way. I figured there would be some major twist related to her in the end, but she and Silvia... kind of ended the series on a bit of a filler story. It led to them resolving their issues, sure, but I never cared that much for their issues to begin with. It's like you expected us to to ship them as friends, when in reality, it would just make so much more sense if they weren't friends ever again. I mean, they were barely sociable to begin with, then Silvia slept with Michelle's husband. I get that you enjoy the screwed-up dynamic there, two women coming together after their shared lover dies, but they jumped from making amends to being at each other's throats too often. To make that the point of their finale story or their actual purpose in the series seems wrong. Those two mostly coasted over six episodes. Oddly enough, that's mostly fine in Silvia's case, despite her being the returning character, and precisely because she had already run her course, and a mighty good one at that; continuing her story WAS just a fun addition. But with Michelle, well, you created a whole new character that kind of didn't need creating, and you barely developed her or did anything interesting with her. And as for the villains, I feel like you use Celeste and Sadie to indirectly showcase that you're not racist because they are blatantly racist and judged by the others for being so and they do get their comeuppance in the end, but then the aforementioned characters who judge them for being racist are so racist in turn that the point is kinda moot. It's just a racist show with racist characters, no real moral to take from it. You can't even point out that you use humor (irony, satire, parody, whatever) to exemplify how ridiculous racism is, as in, how ridiculous racist people are, but that gets lost in translation because of how racist every other character is as well, Aliza included. Let's not even bring sexism or homophobia/biphobia into this. Do I sound too preachy/SJW-y as I say this? I'm sorry. I'm right there with you on dealing with those issues with a healthy dose of humor, but on ALD it became an overdose. I did laugh three times reading this episode, but they were all the end, so, Idk. It was at Shaniqua dying of syphillis (that really got me, even if it's about an offscreen death), at Kathryn saying "You fucking nigger" to her newborn baby, and at Elizabeth Davis in blackface. The ending was a lot of fun. Kathryn was redeemed some, I enjoyed both Silvia and Michelle entering the political game (though I didn't understand the "New Wikerly Hills" part one bit - does it relate to New Chicago? Are they just... starting a new city? Or renaming the old one? Wot?), and I appreciate that you didn't bring back any of the core DB mainies. That feels respectful. I'm sorry that this is probably not the review you were expecting for. I blame myself for that, because, as I've admitted, I had turned a blind eye on many troublesome aspects of the spin-off thus far. And, of course, I was waiting to have the broad scope of it all to work with, before passing much of an actual judgment. I do think we should, as a community, start pitching our FF projects, and writing actual pilots. Whenever any one of us has a new idea, maybe write a pilot, post it, and wait for the feedback before deciding whether or not the series should continue. I mean, if Ben and Josh end up not reading ALD, then the DB universe is sort of tainted, which is a real shame. The good thing about it is, Aliza and Kathryn are now and forever main characters, which I love. They've earned that.